Vedran Perkov: THE INCREDIBLE WORLD OF BLAVOR & KRAVOSAS

April 14, 2016 @ 7:00 pm - May 6, 2016 @ 8:00 pm

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What is called a fable in the classification of literary genres, can be used as the main determinant of the narrative which Perkov builds at the exhibition in the Gallery School. A tale of two anthropomorphic reptiles, or Incredible world of Blavor and Kravosas, is made of humorous vignettes, which, in accordance with the rules of a fable, contain didactic character. We know that Vedran works a lot and that his work is closely connected with the context of the place or time in which it originates, so that the above-mentioned didacticism does not occur by accident. It should be pointed out that the maxim of the entire exhibition is not dependent on the classical interpretation of the purpose of art, the role of which is used up in its educational mission, but quite the opposite, it tries to underline a shift from its function seen that way. Vedran’s theorem could be read in the way that art can, and should be, a serious joke. His world has often been built from trivial materials, with the idea directed to a personal inclinations subtly tuned for observation and the production of the absurd. I remember one occasion when I assisted Vedran in setting up one of his Buffooneries and realized that, indeed, there are too much layers of newspaper resembling walls, in which he cut enormous quantity of rectangles for windows, too many times he threw the dices and too many times questioned his own position for not making us brood over the purpose of this serious investment, which strives to figure out something frivolous.

Dadaist prank, in this case, among other things, assumes an appearance of an oscillator (bare TV screen) which turns pornographic audio track into horizontal and vertical serpentlike lines, ie. Blavor and Kravosas watch porn movies, while making new plans, or pretending to be smart by reading Kant in poor German and Sartre in poor French, or falling down into the space-time continuum which Vedran imagines as a spiral resembling animated rotoreliefs of Rrose Sélavy’s experimental film Anemic Cinema. Two little snakes, around which this story is built, can be met in our country, and, if we want to be precise, scheltopusik, (Croatian blavor) is not really a snake. It passes for a snake, but it is a lizard without legs, with the possibility of auto-amputation. When these snakes are up to something they bite their own tails, resembling to the symbolic representations of the cyclicality of the alchemical opus, or the ancient visualization of the concept of infinity. Through the friends presented to us, the opposition of the periphery and the center is reflected, because cobras, mambas and taipans, that “serious” snake world in which the two block “ninnyhammers”, Blavor and Kravosas can only indirectly participate, is far away. Metaphors that are established through his crawling protagonists are the part of the repository of the author’s conquered areas and positions, such as the aforementioned ouroboros, which he constantly underlines, because practice makes the master, as the artist himself once said, while endlessly throwing tennis ball against the wall.

This somewhat childlike allegory about art has been made in such a way as to allow the author to demystify again a work of art, his creation and his own personality, and to bring a more complete picture closer to those who, perhaps in the future, may deal with the same thing. To the participants of the School of Fine Arts, a particular area of freedom that has to be continuously built and cherished has been shown, ignoring thereby the dubious economic rationale of such a life direction. For others, it remains to laugh like I always, in front of Vedran’s works, do.